WarSclerotic

Jordan’s King Abdullah on Sunday said he has decided ‎not to renew parts of his country’s landmark 1994 peace ‎treaty with Israel.‎

The king released a statement saying that he intends ‎to pull out of clauses in the ‎agreement that allow Israel to lease two small areas comprising 1,000 acres of agricultural ‎land‎ – ‎Baqura, known as Naharayim in Hebrew, in the northern Jordan Valley, and Ghamr in ‎the south – from the Jordanians for 25 years. ‎

The leases expire next year and the deadline for ‎renewing them is Thursday.‎

In Baqura, Israeli ‎‎”rights” date back to the ‎‎1920s, when Russian ‎Jewish engineer Pinhas ‎Rutenberg obtained a ‎concession in British Mandate ‎Palestine to build a ‎power plant there.‎

Both areas became part of Jordan after the kingdom ‎‎gained independence in 1946. Israel seized control ‎of Baqura in 1950 and ‎Ghamr in the 1967 Six-Day ‎War. Jordan regained sovereignty over the areas as ‎part of the 1994 peace deal and agreed to grant ‎Israeli farmers and military officers free access to ‎both.‎

In the wake of the agreement, the power plant in ‎Naharayim ‎ was named “Isle of Peace.” In 1997, it ‎became the scene of a gruesome terrorist attack, when a Jordanian soldier opened fire at a group of Israeli schoolgirls on a field trip, killing seven and injuring six others.‎

Gil Eliyahu / JINI

‎‎”These are Jordanian lands and they will remain [Jordanian lands]. We ‎are practicing our full sovereignty on our ‎‎land. Our priority in an era of regional turmoil is ‎to protect our interests and do ‎‎whatever is required ‎for Jordan and the Jordanians,” Abdullah said ‎in a statement Sunday. ‎

The king did not give a reason for his decision, ‎but ‎he has faced escalating domestic pressure to end ‎the ‎lease and return the territories to full ‎Jordanian ‎control. ‎

A statement by the Jordanian ‎Foreign Ministry said ‎that “under the terms of the peace treaty, the lease ‎would be ‎automatically renewed unless either of the ‎parties ‎notified the other a year before expiry that ‎it ‎wished to terminate the agreement.” ‎

Jordan and Egypt are the only two Arab states to have ‎peace treaties with Israel.

Jordan and Israel have ‎a long history of close security ‎ties and have also been expanding ‎economic ties in the ‎last year, including a major ‎deal to export billions ‎of dollars of Israeli ‎natural gas to the kingdomthrough a ‎pipeline that ‎crosses their northern borders.‎

However, the peace treaty with Israel is unpopular and ‎‎pro-Palestinian sentiment widespread in Jordan. ‎‎Activists and politicians have been vocal against a ‎‎renewal of the lease, which they say is ‎‎”humiliating” and perpetuates “‎Israeli occupation” ‎of Jordanian territory.‎

Tensions between Israel and Jordan have mounted in ‎‎recent months over such issues as the contested ‎‎status of Jerusalem and its holy sites, the stalled ‎‎Middle East peace talks, and last year’s shooting of two ‎‎Jordanian citizens by an Israeli Embassy guard in ‎‎Amman, which ignited a diplomatic crisis.‎ Relations thawed after Israel replaced its ‎‎ambassador. ‎

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that ‎Jordan wanted to exercise its option to end the ‎arrangement, but stressed the Israel “will enter ‎negotiations with it on the possibility of extending ‎the current arrangement.”‎

Netanyahu said the “accord as a whole is an ‎important thing” and called the peace deals with ‎Jordan and Egypt “anchors of regional stability.” ‎

Kobi Gideon / GPO

Former Israeli Ambassador to Jordan Oded Eran said ‎he was not surprised by Jordan’s decision, and said ‎there was still time for the two countries to ‎renegotiate the agreement. ‎

He dismissed the possibility that Jordan might pull ‎out of other parts of the broader peace treaty.‎

‎”For its own interests, the continuation of the ‎adherence to the peace treaty is in Jordan’s ‎interest as indeed it is in the interest of Israel,” ‎Eran said.‎

Dr. Abdullah Swalha, founder and director of the ‎Center for Israel Studies in Amman, told Israel ‎Hayom that ‎”there have been calls in Jordan to ‎cancel these clauses for two years. Recently, 86 MPs ‎signed a ‎petition demanding this. There is no economic gain for ‎Jordan here, so the king did it to ‎appease public ‎opinion.”‎

He said he believed a deal could be reached ‎regarding the leasing of lands in Ghamr, but stressed that ‎‎”there is no scenario where Jordan relinquishes ‎sovereignty over Baqura. Jews have some rights there ‎and monetary compensation will probably be ‎discussed, or Jordanian farmers would lease the land ‎from the Jews, but we will not give up the land.”‎

A senior Jordanian official denied reports that the ‎move stemmed from Palestinian or Arab pressure. ‎

‎”These lands belong to the Kingdom of Jordan, and in ‎light of the regional reality in recent years, it is ‎not appropriate for them to be leased [to a foreign entity],” he said.‎

He said Jordan’s position was not a violation ‎of the peace treaty, saying, “The king acted in ‎accordance with the terms outlined in the clauses ‎signed 24 years ago.” ‎

Israeli farmers were stunned to learn of the move. ‎

‎”It’s like a bomb hit us. This means that years of ‎work will go down the drain,” said Dr. Eyal Blum, ‎head of the Central Arava Regional Council. ‎

‎”The agricultural lands here are very significant in ‎terms of the area’s security, national security and ‎the agricultural sector in the Arava [Desert]. This means 30 ‎agricultural farms in an area covering 345 acres ‎will collapse. It is inconceivable that after all ‎these years the order will change.” ‎

Erez Gibori, a farmer from Moshav Tzofar, said the ‎area’s farmers “are now fighting for our lives. If ‎they close the gates to our lands, there’s nothing ‎for us here. We will leave. The state cannot abandon ‎us.”‎

The news “was a big ‎surprise,” said Jordan Valley Regional Council head Idan Greenbaum.

“We were very disappointed and saddened to ‎learn of the king’s decision. This came as a shock to us because we ‎have a very good relationship with our Jordanian ‎neighbors. ‎

‎”This isn’t the end of it, though. We expect the ‎government to sit down with the Jordanians and reach ‎an agreement that will allow us to continue farming ‎these lands, as we have been doing for the past 70 ‎years,” he said. ‎

A global financial watchdog has given Iran until February to crack down on terrorism funding or risk deeper economic isolation.

In September, the State Department’s annual survey of global terrorism determined that Iran remains the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism with funding networks and operational cells working around the world. The report accused Iran of intensifying numerous conflicts and trying to disrupt governments in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The Financial Action Task Force, which monitors money-laundering worldwide, said Friday it would effectively blacklist Iran if it does complete reforms that would bring it into line with global norms on anti-terror financing enforcement.

The Paris-based watchdog said after a meeting of its members that it was “disappointed” that Tehran had acted on only nine out of 10 of its guidelines despite pledges to make the grade. It had previously set a deadline of October to complete all 10 reforms.

“We expect Iran to move swiftly to implement the commitments that it undertook at a high level so long ago,” said Marshall Billingslea, the U.S. assistant Treasury Secretary for terrorist financing, after chairing an FATF meeting.

“In line with that, we expect that it will have adopted all of these measures by February. If by February 2019 Iran has not yet done so, then we will take further steps,” he said.

In the meantime, the FATF said it had decided to continue suspending counter-measures, which can go as far as limiting or even banning transactions with a country.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said he welcomed the decision to extend the deadline to February, the state news agency IRNA reported.

He also criticized the U.S. chairmanship of FATF, saying it was an attempt to bring Iran back on to the international money-laundering blacklist, without elaborating.

Iran’s parliament approved some new measures against funding terrorism earlier this month under pressure to adopt international standards. But FATF said that it could only consider fully enacted legislation.

Members of FATF had already given Tehran until this month to bring its laws against money-laundering and funding of terrorism up to its guidelines.

Otherwise, Iran risked being returned to a blacklist of non-compliant countries that makes foreign investors and banks reluctant to deal with it.

Britain, France and Germany are trying to keep some financial channels open to Iran after the United States pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal in May and re-imposed sanctions.

Analysts say that inclusion on the FATF’s blacklist could effectively make that all but impossible.

In recent weeks, residents of the Upper Galilee region have witnessed trucks unload countless mounds of sand and watched artificial hills slowly rise, with a tank or armored personnel carrier parked atop each one.

“The hills are being built close to the cement barrier the IDF has been building in recent months along the border,” an area resident told Israel Hayom, referring to Israel’s border with Lebanon. “Judging from what I’ve seen, they are being built opposite Hezbollah watchtowers in a manner that allows [Israeli soldiers] to see past the cement wall, into Lebanon.”

“While they were building the [cement] barrier, I saw a tank overlooking the work, and now we see the same tank on the hill itself,” he said.

However, defense officials told Israel Hayom that there was no connection between the location of Hezbollah’s watchtowers and the location of the artificial hills where the tanks and APCs have been deployed.

According to one Israeli official, the purpose of the new positions is to give the IDF a field of vision beyond the cement barrier which has been built along the border in recent months.

The artificial sand hills are higher than the cement barrier, which is between and 6-8 meters (20-26 feet) high.

The sand mounds are part of the army’s broader efforts to erect obstacles along the Lebanese border.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said: “The elevated hills were built for the tanks routinely deployed throughout the sector. The elevation was carried out to improve the tanks’ field of vision and the effectiveness next to the barrier.”